LISTEN: It will take years before farms hit hard by Hurricane Helene can recover. That devastation extends to communities of immigrant farm workers, who have largely been left out of storm relief programs. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more.
Georgia’s agriculture industry saw close to $7 billion in losses due to Hurricane Helene as part of a devastating hurricane season. Months later, most communities of farm workers, those employed in the fields and packing houses, are still struggling, with no real help in sight.
On a Tuesday night in a small neighborhood outside Tifton, Anahi Santiago, a volunteer with the United Farm Workers Foundation, gathers a group of neighbors under the last rays of sunlight.
She explains in Spanish that they’ve brought fruit cups, milk, and food for the kids. On a table, there’s also hygiene kits, baby formula, diapers and menstrual products.
UFW operates nationwide to advocate for a growing number of domestic and migrant farm workers. For the past couple of months since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of South and Central Georgia, volunteers here have focused on helping many farm workers get back on their feet.
But most, although they are longtime Georgia residents, lack support from social safety net programs and live in housing not fit to weather major natural disasters.
One neighbor, Gladys, helped organize the donation drive by UFW.
“Here, you share with people,” she said. “Between Hispanics, we need to help each other.”
Santiago said she has been out in communities like this since the morning after Helene cleared, giving out donations from the back of a car.
“The National Guard was out here also giving out, like, water,” Santiago said. There were distributions of hot food, too. But that kind of help has pretty much disappeared, she said.
“Just certain churches that are getting in donations from certain people, but once those go out, there really isn’t anything else,” Santiago said.
Nearby, trailers like Delia Gomez's saw real damage from Helene.
“We are still working on fixing it, but since we don’t have insurance, we can’t [finish],” Gomez said. Her husband and friends have been making most of the repairs themselves.
While the family was stuck inside the living room during storm-force winds, the tin roof blew off. Wood rained down on their heads.
In their decade living in South Georgia, this was the worst storm they'd experienced, she said.
“I told my kids if we are going to die here, we are going to die here together,” Gomez said.
Among the neighbors and their kids sorting through clothes laid on a tarp on the ground is a mom, named Amalia. GPB agreed to only use her first name.
Amalia said she had been making a living baling pine straw before Helene toppled thousands of pine trees. As it works in many agricultural fields, Amalia was being paid by the bale, what’s called a piece rate. There’s a lot less work now, so Amalia and her husband are also taking shifts at a nearby factory.
After the storm, her family of seven lost power and water for 15 days. She says her refrigerator and water heater broke. Now she’s struggling to afford groceries for her family.
“We need neighbors to lend a hand, to help us feed our kids,” she said.
For Amalia’s family, there is no state or federal assistance coming. They are undocumented. And like many families here they also rely on seasonal farm work to make a living.
These workers plant crops, harvest our food and represent the engine of Georgia’s massive agriculture industry. This work largely vanished in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
There aren’t any official estimates of how many domestic farm workers there are in Georgia. But according to data from the DOL National Agricultural Workers Survey, 60% of U.S. farm workers hired to work in crop fields are foreign-born. Of that group, 40% do not have work authorization, meaning they are not legal citizens. This data does not include foreign workers who come to the U.S. on temporary work visas through the popular H-2A program.
“They've been here for 20 years, 30 years. You know, this is all they know, this is all they do,” said Alma Young with the United Farm Workers Foundation. “It’s just fair that we do something to help them.”
Storm aid is coming to farmers. So far, Georgia Gov.Brian Kemp has set aside $100 million of state money for recovery in eligible counties. Most is available to growers, while a quarter was set aside for timber producers, through a loan program to be administered by the Georgia Development Authority.
Some state lawmakers have hinted at more assistance. And last week Kemp promised he would make “providing relief to those most affected” by recent disasters one of his priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
At the federal level, farmers have responded enthusiastically to a push for billions more in hurricane relief which has bipartisan support. A congressional spending proposal released yesterday would do just that if it’s passed — it outlines money that could be made available to states in the form of block grants, for growers and producers who have experienced losses this year.
But even with these packages, Young said she is still not hearing support for the farm workers she serves. She said she has largely “lost faith” that elected representatives will meet the needs she’s seeing.
“It is fairly obvious that, you know, the growers are their priority,” Young said.
She understands why: Agriculture is Georgia’s leading industry, and farmers who lost their crops need help to make back what they’ve lost, and prepare for future disasters.
“But at the same time, who is doing the work?” Young said.
Young argues that farm workers are already at a disadvantage, and other advocate organizations say the same. Though it’s a federal mandate that farm workers make at least minimum wage, their annual incomes fall most often around or below the federal poverty level. According to the DOL, almost half of crop farm workers report not having health insurance, and advocates say they also lack access to many employee benefits.
Young said it will affect growers if recovery for farmers continues to exclude specific provisions for farm workers in Georgia. Without work, they could leave, and farmers could be left without laborers.
When asked about whether they’ve considered including farm workers in requests for aid, spokespeople for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who have both been outspoken on farm worker rights in the past, only pointed to existing efforts to pass a spending package.
Spokespeople for Kemp’s office and the Georgia Department of Agriculture pointed to eligibility requirements for the loan program through the GDA, which includes, among other things, being a farm operator, offering real estate collateral, and having permanent legal status.
The federal government has helped farm workers after past disasters.
Farm workers were deemed essential during the COVID pandemic, and nonprofits like USF were able to help get one-time checks of $600 to communities like the one near Tifton, regardless of workers’ immigration status.
At a disaster recovery center in Jackson run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spokesperson Dasha Castillo said that undocumented workers can apply for aid from the agency if one family member, like a kid, is U.S. born.
“You can apply on behalf of that child using their Social Security number,” Castillo said. “And I've personally seen folks that are undocumented register and receive assistance.”
Assistance for home repairs, rent and other sorts of storm-related damage, she said.
Castillo said since FEMA works with other aid agencies too, even if people are noncitizens, they can get some sort of help, and should apply.
“FEMA's not here to process anyone,” Castillo said. “They're here to help, and especially during emergencies.”
Castillo said FEMA also has the resources to help people in a variety of languages. FEMA has approved over 180,000 applications for assistance for people in qualifying Georgia counties.
But, especially in undocumented communities, there is still fear of interacting with the federal government, Young said, or at least uncertainty about how to apply. Some of the farm workers she has helped since the storm say they have been denied FEMA assistance or assistance from state agencies, because of errors in application paperwork or missing eligibility requirements.
Back near Tifton, Amalia, with her broken refrigerator and five hungry kids, says she would apply for FEMA aid, but isn’t eligible.
“Unfortunately we don’t have a child born here,” she said. “We don’t have help from anyone.”
For the foreseeable future, she's left with charities and nonprofit organizations that have the time and money to help.
